The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Monday, October 06, 2014

The Adults Show Up in Hong Kong

The student curtainraiser in Hong Kong appears to be over
for now.

A few hundred diehard students remain on post at the three
main demonstration sites.In some
places there are more journos than demonstrators.

But don’t get the impression the movement has petered
out.The grownups have appeared to take
this political exercise to the next level.

Alan Leung, no student, 56 years old, democracy activist,
long time pol, one time candidate for Chief Executive, gave an interview to
Malcolm Moore of the Daily Telegraph:

"Almost 95 per cent of the crowd
that has gathered every night for seven nights is between 15 to 25 years
old," said Alan Leong, 56, the leader of the pro-democratic Civic party.

"These people will be around for
a long time. They will be masters of Hong Kong for the next 40 to 50 years.

"I challenge Xi Jinping (the
Chinese president) to answer this question: even if you bring your weight to
bear and somehow get your proposal passed, how are you going to govern Hong
Kong when this is your public for the next five decades?" …Mr Leong has flatly rejected the
proposal from Beijing and said he was sure it would be voted down by the
democrats in Hong Kong's Legislative Council.

"No matter what tinkering you may
do, the crux of it, if you strip it to the bones, is that Beijing wants a
pre-election before the election. It is as naked as that. How can you say this
is the Communist party honouring its handover promises?" he said.

"I am quite sure that the
proposal for electoral reform sent by Beijing must be vetoed."

The proposal he’s referring to is the proposal for the
nominating committee that will put forward candidates for the 2017 elections to
be conducted under universal suffrage. It needs to pass by a 2/3 vote and a united front of pro-democracy legislators can block it.

That’s the threat.If
the nominating committee process isn’t cleaned up to the satisfaction of the
democracy movement, gridlock and worse.

Mr. Lai favors continued confrontation to get the best possible deal and
mobilize Hong Kong. “We have to make a picture out of action to move
people,” he says. “You can’t reason people into action.”

Here’s the strategy, in my opinion: co-opt the Hong Kong
executive and use its fear of unrest to wedge it from Beijing and, instead, turn
it into an advocate to Beijing for accommodating the reformers.

The narrative rests on the idea that the Hong Kong executive
didn’t do its job when it consulted to the NPC on the public mood concerning aspirations for the 2017 elections:

Mr Rowse [a British civil servant who
continued in the Hong Kong administration post-1997 as head of the foreign
investment department] said there had been a total breakdown in trust between
the Hong Kong government and the public following the consultation process over
the city's democratic future.

"The report that was presented to
Beijing by Hong Kong was, well, I have used the word mendacious," he said.
"It was a case of pre-emptive cringe, asking them what they would like to
hear and then telling them that."

The Hong Kong city government didn't just blink; it "pre-emptively cringed".

That’s the conceptual hook for reopening the nominating
committee issue (notice it’s no longer “Beijing reneged”.That meme might be good enough to gull
journos and the public but it flies like a dropped anvil in negotiations with
the Hong Kong executive and Beijing).

The deal:

[Rowse] suggested that while Beijing
wanted all candidates running for the leadership of Hong Kong in 2017 to be
nominated by a committee, the public could name the people put in front of the
committee.

He also suggested that the committee
could be made more representative, unlike the current election committee which
is stuffed with Beijing's cronies. "I don't think the game is lost,"
he said. "We could do a lot if people believe the government is acting in
good faith. The problem is this breakdown in trust".

And, since we’re talking politics, the horseshit, courtesy
of Leung:

…How can you say this is the Communist
party honouring its handover promises?" he said.

Mr Leong said he was now
"prepared to be led" by the students. But he added: I'm very worried,
extremely anxious. You could have a repeat of Tiananmen, that is the worst case
scenario.

"I still trust that there are
sensible right-minded people in the administration to make sure that what I am
most anxious about will not happen."

My three pet peeves, all in one: the “reneged” canard, the
Tiananmen Redux alarmism, and the “led by leaderless students” BS.

And for the bonus round, more horseshit from Leung:

"Hong Kong must
be a testing ground, a laboratory for experimenting with local democracy. This
is a role that Hong Kong has been playing for 150 years," he added.

The way I see it is this:

In order to tamp down the current ruckus, the Hong Kong
government has accepted the students as interlocutors.The purpose of the discussions is to address
the feelings of the people of Hong Kong concerning democratic reform.

I believe that this is conceived as a clever way to offer
the Hong Kong executive a way out of the rancor and embarrassment and unrest of
interminable street protests by aggrieved students.At the same time it offers an avenue for
reopening the nominating committee issue as a matter of pressing public
concern.

The purpose is to give the Hong Kong government a chance to
earn forgiveness for its previous transgressions against the popular will, get
some slack on the police violence investigation, and get out of the line of
fire by becoming the democracy movement’s advocate—or at least passive partner—in
pushing democracy proposals on Beijing.

Of course, the democracy movement is not going to get its
way on the backs of seventeen-year old students.Xi Jinping is not going to be seduced by the
base and blatantly ahistorical flattery that he should cement his great-leader
stature by showing Deng Xiaoping-style flexibility in his handling of the issue. (And he is not going to capitulate to a political movement that calls itself a "revolution" for that matter; Joshua Wang and Benny Tai, by the way, both found it expedient to declare"this is not a revolution", a message which has apparently not yet made it to the editors and headline writers of the world.)

Beijing will only budge if (and maybe not even if) virtually
every key element of Hong Kong society is active, mobilized, organized, and on
board with the tactic of sustained and escalating unrest if their desired
reforms aren’t implemented.

Not just students, in other words.Educators from the eight universities and
other schools (I think most of them are on board); professionals (500 legal
professionals have already issued a statement); the pro-democracy bloc in
Legco; a nice chunk of the financial sector, perhaps discretely organized by
Mr. Rowse (look for a lot of gyrating to justify the idea that unrest in Hong
Kong is not bad and indeed is vitally important for the stock and bond boys because Democracy!);
segments of the government that are not C.Y. Leung; and a carefully stroked and
enticed tycoon or two (paging Jimmy Lai! Paging Jimmy Lai!).

There’s enough support, determination, and money (the last
two courtesy of media kingpin and lavish funder of all things democratic in
Hong Kong, the markedly rough-around-the-edges Jimmy Lai of NextMedia and Apple
Daily.The party of Alan Leung received
at least HK$ 4 million of Lai’s largesse ) to push this strategy.

Add friendly financial assistance and institutional support
from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and the other NGOs that threaten
to stain the movement with their color-revolution taint.

Add to that the frantic enthusiasm of the Western press and
the pontificating of the neo-liberal powers (what I previously characterized as
the creeping internationalization of the Hong Kong issue has already begun) and
we have the makings of a nice pro-democracy political firestorm.

The endgame, in a perfect world, would be if the NPC
formally rescinded the provision for a nominating committee in favor of open
nomination.But there are other ways to
skin the cat, like tweaking the composition or selection process for the “broadly
representative” nominating committee to ensure that somebody acceptable to the
democracy movement—Hey, maybe that nice Mr. Alan Leung!—makes it before the
voters.

[T]he
government negotiating team led by Ms. Lam could offer carrots, observers say,
including allowing more people to be eligible to run in primary-like contests
for the city’s highest office.

Or, it
could adjust the committee charged with picking candidates for the top post to
make it more reflective of public opinion. Currently, that 1,200-member
committee is stacked with pro-Beijing members.

As for the students, they will remain indispensable as
intimidation on tap, a righteous force that can be put into the field to
embarrass and appall the government with the threat of widespread unrest if
Carrie Lam’s negotiating team proves unnecessarily recalcitrant. And of course they are a necessary PR adjunct
and welcome focus for the attention of the army of journalists desperately
traipsing the city for stories.

Possibly, the Hong Kong government has already signaled, if
not its capitulation, its willingness to horsetrade.

As I previously wrote, I considered the fizzling out of the student ultimatum on Thursday night (for
C.Y. Leung to resign) and the rapid withdrawal of the students on Sunday night
despite the violence in Mong Kok as signs of a choreographed deal.

I tend to give the greatest respect to one group of actors—the
university administrators—in the midst of what has been a carnival of
less-than-honest framing, slippery tactics, and alarmist bullshit.

They apparently have the job of wrangling the student
demonstrators and they seem to have a sincere desire to keep them safe, not
only from the Hong Kong cops, but also from the machinations of the Occupy
movement, which may, as the situation requires, need some student martyrs at
the hands of cops, triads, or provocateurs to keep the outrage machine
cranking.I, for one, would not consider
it beyond possibility that some determined backer of the movement might
actually send some anonymous goons to rough up some students if he felt that
was necessary to keep the pro-democracy fire burning and realize his
investments in political reform.

After he went downtown to ceremoniously call for the
cancellation of the Thursday ultimatum against C.Y. Leung, the president of
City University of Hong Kong, James Sung, issued this remarkable statement:

“Although
they can't grasp the full complexity of the situation, they have innocent
hearts...and should be given the utmost toleration and compassion."

The struggle for Hong Kong isn't just students speaking truth to power with umbrellas and Cantopop.

This is a prolonged, sophisticated multi-stage political battle between two resourceful and capable adversaries.

If you want to understand what’s
going on in Hong Kong, you can’t focus solely on the beauty of democracy and the
adorableness of the students.The
democracy movement is also embedded in a matrix of money, subterfuge, compromise,
subornation, propaganda, and manipulation.In other words, it’s good old-fashioned politics, Hong Kong—and Beijing—style.